Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano :Eruption

And she remembered his leer. He was just learning how to do it, which of course meant he overdid it. “So they’re gonna call it the First United Colorado-Kansas University,” he’d answered. “Only for short it’ll be-”

Vanessa had understood the idea of acronyms, too, even if she might not have known that word yet, either. “FUCK U!” she’d shrilled, and laughed so loud, and in such delighted horror, that their mother had come into her room to see what the hell was going on. They’d both solemnly denied everything, of course. With no more than an open atlas for evidence, Mom hadn’t been able to pin a crime on them.

Even then, you might have guessed Rob would end up playing in a band called Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles. Vanessa didn’t much care for the music, though she had to admit some of the lyrics were clever. She had no idea where the band was right now-somewhere back East, if she remembered straight. If she did, the odds Rob was okay were good.

The odds on herself, or on Pickles, or on the Toyota… Red lights on the dashboard warned SERVICE ENGINE SOON. The car was running hot even though the eastbound US 50, heading away from the Rockies, tended downhill. If it crapped out, how far could she coast? Till the next hill, anyhow, and those were few and far between around here.

She drove through Coolidge, just over the border, almost before she realized it was there. If the place had ever had a hundred people, she would have been amazed. How many were still here, and how many had lit out when the supervolcano erupted? She’d never know.

US 50 paralleled the Arkansas River. The rain had washed some of the ash off the trees that grew alongside the river, so they looked a little more like their old selves. The river, by contrast, looked muddy and full and angry, even though it wasn’t raining all that hard.

For a little while, Vanessa wondered why. Then the old metaphorical lightbulb went on above her head. The rain was washing volcanic ash off the trees, sure, and off the grass, and off the ground generally. And it was washing that ash… straight into the river. Where else could the stuff go?

How long till the Arkansas started flooding? The Missouri was a lot closer to the eruption, which could only mean even more ash would be going into it. So it would start flooding sooner, if it hadn’t started already. The other rivers flowing from the Rockies toward the Mississippi would do the same thing.

They would also wash the volcanic ash toward and then into the Father of Waters. What would happen when the Big Muddy turned into the Big Muddier, and then into the Big Muddiest? Vanessa didn’t know in detail, but this was one of those times when the big picture did fine. The big picture was lots of muddy water spreading out over lots and lots of land.

Her motor coughed. She forgot about the big picture. Somebody might have dropped an ice cube down the back of her shirt. A human being who sounded like that would have been dying of emphysema. The enine was dying, too. A mechanic wouldn’t call it emphysema, but it amounted to the same thing.

Here came Syracuse. A roadside sign proudly proclaimed you could get gas there. It also said you could get food. Chances were you could get gas from the food, too, even if the sign didn’t tell you that.

Go? Stop? Did she want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere if the car quit between towns? Wasn’t this already the middle of nowhere? Was she better off with other people or as far away from them as she could get?

She kept going. Whether that made her an optimist or a pessimist was one more thing she’d think about when she had time. If she ever did. Which looked less and less likely.

After Syracuse, signs announced that the next town ahead was Garden City. By the way they announced it, Garden City might actually be something. It had hotels and motels and fast-food joints and meat-packing plants. Some of the signs for those were in both English and Spanish. She’d seen the like in L.A. and Denver, of

course. Spanish was the language in which a lot of hard work got done in the USA.

But in a place like Garden City, Kansas? Evidently. It turned out not to matter to Vanessa. The engine coughed again. This time, it sounded more like Cheyne-Stokes breathing than emphysema. And, like somebody with Cheyne-Stokes breathing, her car died. All the red and yellow warning lights came on. As she’d figured she would, she rolled as far as she could. Then she steered over to the shoulder and stopped.

As soon as the motion ceased, Pickles quit sounding like an air-raid siren. Relishing the silence, Vanessa spoke out loud: “Well, what do I do now?”

Her basic choices were sitting tight or getting out and walking toward Garden City. If she sat tight, she was counting on somebody halfway decent rescuing her before she had to start walking to Garden City. If she got out, she’d feel like a snail without its shell. And she and Pickles-especially Pickles-would be breathing the outside air that had just killed her car.

In a TV show, they’d go to commercials. When they came back, she’d find the right answer with the greatest of ease. Or they’d cut away to her somewhere else, and she’d explain to an admiring friend how she’d got there.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t cut away from life. She had no idea what the right answer was, or even if there was one. She hadn’t come this far by sitting tight, though. She got Pickles and an abridged version of her stuff-iron rations, tampons, a few socks and panties, and an umbrella-and started walking.

She was glad for the umbrella right away. The rain was so mixed with ash that everything it touched got dirtier. That included her jeans from the knees down, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t do anything about anything, except hope her feet didn’t blister before she got to Garden City.

She almost slipped in the mud. A car going by splashed a little on her. If that went on, she’d look like someone made of muck by the time she got to the town. Another car sloshed past and splashed her some more. She kept walking.

Colin Ferguson begrudged the time he wasted doing the I-5 boogie from L.A. to the Bay Area. Even with all the security bullshit, flying would have been faster. But ash in the air kept planes on the ground. If you wanted to get anywhere, you drove.

He hoped the Taurus would make it. Driving was a crapshoot these days, too. California hadn’t been buried r ash from the supervolcano, the way the Rocky Mountain states and much of the prairie had been. Ash lay on the ground, though, and the ash in the air wouldn’t screw up airplane engines alone. It wasn’t good for cars, either.

He’d made it over the Grapevine, anyhow. That long, tough climb getting out of L.A. County had worried him, but here he was, easing down the other side. He’d thought about taking Highway 1 up to Berkeley; there was supposed to be less ash along the coast. But, while the Pacific Coast Highway was breathtakingly beautiful, it was also slow and wearing. You couldn’t just haul ass on PCH; you had to drive. He’d taken a chance for speed, he’d got away with it, and now he had his reward.

I-5 ran straight as a string through the Central Valley. It was the short way north, and it was the straight way north. As long as you didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, you pointed the car and you went. Mountains off to either side, fields lying next to the unwinding road, occasional towns. The landscape didn’t change, but the odometer did.

At one point, the atmosphere changed, and not for the better. Near Kettleman City (which wasn’t one), they collected cattle to ship them to market. You breathed concentrated essence of bullshit for a few minutes as you went by. Then the air cleared again, and you were relieved you couldn’t smell what had relieved the cows any more.